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Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Vol LtLq Wilr l $• jLtCvw A>^ KVt t* |)Cw4aC , ii. fjjJCfci-r} i* tl&r<U., ^w. iw» ,w* M© 1 -Books Bp Lafcatiio |)earu. STRAY LEAVES IN STRANGE LITERATURE. i6mo, $1.50. GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN. 2 vols, crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. OUT OF THE EAST. Reveries and Studies in New Japan. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. KOKORO: Hints and Echoes of Japanese Inner Life. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. GLEANINGS FROM BUDDHA- FIELDS : Studies of Hand and Soul in the Far East. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York. GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN BY LAFCADIO HEARN IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLltN AND COMPANY Utto^ibe $res& Cambribae Copyright, 1894, BT LAFCADIO HEARN. All rights reserved. The 'Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., IT. S.A. trotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company, TO THE FRIENDS WHOSE KINDNESS ALONE RENDERED POSSIBLE MY SOJOURN IN THE ORIENT,— TO PAYMASTER MITCHELL McDONALD, U. S. N. AND BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN, ESQ. Emeritus Professor of Philology and Japanese in the Imperial University of TokyS I DEDICATE THESE VOLUMES IN TOKEN OF AFFECTION AND GRATITUDE PREFACE. 1 In the Introduction to his charming “ Tales of Old Japan,” Mr. Mitford wrote in 1871: “The books which have been written of late years about Japan have either been compiled from official records, or have contained the sketchy impressions of passing travelers. Of the inner life of the Japanese the world at large knows but little : their religion, their super¬ stitions, their ways of thought, the hidden springs by which they move, — all these are as yet mysteries.” This invisible life referred to by Mr. Mitford is the Unfamiliar Japan of which I have been able to obtain a few glimpses. The reader may, perhaps, be disappointed by their rarity ; for a residence of little more than four years among the people — even by one who tries to adopt their habits and customs — scarcely suffices to enable the foreigner to begin to feel at home in this world of strangeness. None can feel more than the author himself how little has been accomplished in these volumes, and how much remains to do. The popular religious ideas — especially the ideas derived from Buddhism — and the curious super- VI PREFACE. stitions touched upon in these sketches are little shared by the educated classes of New Japan. Ex¬ cept as regards his characteristic indifference toward abstract ideas in general and metaphysical speculation in particular, the Occidentalized Japanese of to-day stands almost on the intellectual plane of the culti¬ vated Parisian, or Bostonian. But he is inclined to treat with undue contempt all conceptions of the supernatural; and toward the great religious ques¬ tions of the hour his attitude is one of perfect apathy. Rarely does his university training in modern phi¬ losophy impel him to attempt any independent study of relations, either sociological or psychological. For him, superstitions are simply superstitions; their relation to the emotional nature of the people interests him not at all.1 And this not only because he thoroughly understands that people, but because the class to which he belongs is still unreasoningly, though quite naturally, ashamed of its older beliefs. Most us of who now call ourselves agnostics can recollect the feelings with which, in the period of our fresh emancipation from a faith far more irra¬ tional than Buddhism, we looked back upon the gloomy theology of our fathers. Intellectual Japan has become agnostic within only a few decades ; and the suddenness of this mental revolution sufficiently explains the principal, though not perhaps all the causes of the present attitude of the superior class 1 In striking contrast to this indifference is the strong, rational, farseeing conservatism of Viscount Torio,—a noble exception. PREFACE. vii toward Buddhism. For the time being it certainly borders upon intolerance; and while such is the feel¬ ing even to religion as distinguished from supersti¬ tion, the feeling toward superstition as distinguished from religion must be something stronger still. But the rare charm of Japanese life, so different from that of all other lands, is not to be found in its Europeanized circles. It is to be found among the great common people, who represent in Japan, as in all countries, the national virtues, and who still cling to their delightful old customs, their pictur¬ esque dresses, their Buddhist images, their house¬ hold shrines, their beautiful and touching worship of ancestors. This is the life of which a foreign ob¬ server can never weary, if fortunate and sympathetic enough to enter into it, — the life that forces him sometimes to doubt whether the course of our boasted Western progress is really in the direction . of moral development. Each day, while the years pass, there will be revealed to him some strange and unsuspected beauty in it. Like other life, it has its darker side; yet even this is brightness com¬ pared with the darker side of Western existence. It has its foibles, its follies, its vices, its cruelties; yet the more one sees of it, the more one mar¬ vels at its extraordinary goodness, its miraculous patience, its never-failing courtesy, its simplicity of heart, its intuitive charity. And to our own. larger Occidental comprehension, its commonest su¬ perstitions, however contemned at Tokyo, have rarest vm PREFACE. value as fragments of the unwritten literature of its hopes, its fears, its experience with right and wrong, — its primitive efforts to find solutions for the riddle of the Unseen. How much the lighter and kindlier superstitions of the people add to the charm of Japanese life can, indeed, be understood only by one who has long resided in the interior. A few of their beliefs are sinister, — such as that in demon-foxes, which public education is rapidly dissipating; but a large number are comparable for beauty of fancy even to those Greek myths in which our noblest poets of to-day still find inspiration; while many others, which encourage kindness to the unfortunate, and kindness to animals, can never have produced any but the happiest moral results. The amusing presumption of domestic animals, and the comparative fearlessness of many wild creatures in the presence of man ; the white clouds of gulls that hover about each incoming steamer in expectation of an alms of crumbs; the whirring of doves from temple-eaves to pick up the rice scattered for them by pilgrims; the familiar storks of ancient public gardens; the deer of holy shrines, awaiting cakes ■*and caresses ; the fish which raise their heads from sacred lotus-ponds when the stranger’s shadow falls upon the water, — these and a hundred other pretty sights are due to fancies which, though called super¬ stitious, inculcate in simplest form the sublime truth of the Unity of Life. And even when considering beliefs less attractive than these, — superstitions of PREFACE. ix which the grotesqueness may provoke a smile, — the impartial observer would do well to bear in mind the words of Lecky : — “ Many superstitions do undoubtedly answer to the Greek conception of slavish ‘fear of the Gods,’ and have been productive of unspeakable misery to mankind; but there are very many others of a different tendency. Supersti¬ tions appeal to our hopes as well as our fears. They often meet and gratify the inmost longings of the heart. They offer certainties where reason can only afford possibilities or probabilities. They supply conceptions on which the imagination loves to dwell. They sometimes impart even a new sanction to moral truths. Creating wants which they alone can satisfy, and fears which they alone can quell, they often become essential elements of happiness; and their consoling efficacy is most felt in the languid or troubled hours when it is most needed. We owe more to our illu¬ sions than to our knowledge. The imagination, which is altogether constructive, probably contributes more to our happiness than the reason, which in the sphere of speculation is mainly critical and destructive. The rude charm which, in the hour of danger or distress, the savage cl’asps so .confi¬ dently to his breast, the sacred picture which is believed to shed a hallowing and protecting influence over the poor man’s cottage, can bestow a more real consolation in the darkest hour of human suffering than can be afforded by the grandest theories of philosophy. No error can be more grave than to imagine that when a critical spirit is abroad the pleasant beliefs will all remain, and the painful ones alone will perish.” That the critical spirit of modernized Japan is now X PREFACE. indirectly aiding rather than opposing the efforts of foreign bigotry to destroy the simple, happy beliefs of the people, and substitute those cruel superstitions which the West has long intellectually outgrown,— the fancies of an unforgiving God and an everlast¬ ing hell, — is surely to be regretted. More than a hundred and sixty years ago Kaempfer wrote of the Japanese: “ In the practice of virtue, in purity of life and outward devotion, they far outdo the Christians.” And except where native morals have sufEered by foreign contamination, as in the open ports, these words are true of the Japanese to-day. My own conviction, and that of many impartial and more experienced observers of Japanese life, is that Japan has nothing whatever to gain by conversion to Christianity, either morally or otherwise, but very much to lose. Of the twenty-seven sketches composing these volumes, four were originally purchased by various newspaper syndicates, and reappear in a considerably altered form, and six were published in the “ Atlan¬ tic Monthly ” (1891-93).
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